Baroque City
by HistoryintheMaking
Summary: In a very different American society, Edward Cullen finds himself struggling to keep himself and those around him alive. In exchange for the fey's "medication," Edward trades them the lives of others. Except now they're asking for one of his own. M AU
1. Prologue

Story information:

Rated M for mature themes, violence, adult language and adult situations. Reader discretion is advised.

Setting: Alternate Universe (no duh :D)

Characters: Edward Cullen, Bella, and (hopefully) other Twilight characters.

Disclaimer: The characters belonging to Twilight are not mine. The faeries however and most OC's do belong to me. I'll keep a list going or something eventually xD

* * *

**Prologue:**  
**UnAmerica**

**-:-**

America is not the America we know today. Close to a hundred years ago she was torn apart by nuclear war. States were wiped completely off the map. Slowly she has begun to get back on her feet. As the government began to gather itself, it realized that it needed to control the little population that was left. Thus the creation of city-states, one of them called Baroque City, where everyone who survived in the Tri-State area, the New England states, and some of Delaware, West Virginia and Virginia were relocated.

As the population began to increase, there was not enough room to hold families in Baroque. They wanted to move westward for more room and space, but the government had blocked it off. That was THEIR land; land for the rich businessmen who called themselves Congress. And they weren't willing to let any city-state stick their dirty selves in **their** yard.

Very un-American, right? Well there wasn't an America anymore. The government decided that the people were too irrational to vote, to even hold the democracy it once had. America was now a dictatorship with its Congressmen running the entire show.

In Baroque City we find a young seventeen year old boy named Edward Cullen. And he is dabbling in something very un-American - no! very otherworldly - as well.


	2. Chapter I: Vera

**Chapter I:**  
**Vera**

**-:-**

Baroque City sweats sin. Her suffocating odor of rust and overpopulation slithers its way into your pores, making you feel just as filthy, just as rotten as the lowlifes who call this place home. You can scrub your skin till you draw blood, but ain't nothing gonna get it out of you. You're better off peeling your skin with a butter knife.

Everybody's looking for a way out of this dump. It doesn't matter. They always find their way back when they realize the world doesn't want sonsofbitches and prostitutes. I should know. Ain't nobody adopted a kid from Hell House Children's Home since 1949.

You keep your head down when you walk in these crowded streets; else the stench will burn your nostrils like lemon juice on an open wound. Ain't no room to breathe when you're shoulder to shoulder to someone, pushing towards the person in front of you who is just as stuck as you are.

But you keep walking, because the current is too strong to resist. You keep walking because you don't want no muddy footprint on your dirty face. The trick to surviving Baroque City crowds is to keep walking.

Streets ahead, an alleyway created by two textile factory buildings teems with sludge from an ill-manufactured sewer. There, they waited for me. I could already taste the chill of their cold faerie bodies in the air. In the congested streets of Baroque I could still sense their evil bodies, waiting for me to lead them to a feast. Their hunger for human flesh was one that could rarely be satisfied, and yet here I was walking right up to them.

See, we had a deal. I provide a few unsuspecting victims, I get what I want.

When I pushed my way through the crowd into the alleyway of the abandoned textile factory, my journey was far from over. Further down I traveled, further into the darkness of the night where light did not dare touch. Even in the daytime, this place was shaded. Perfect for the evil faeries who made Baroque their playground. The stench was even more unbearable. Something along the lines of rotting flesh, blood and sweat clung to the walls. Even worse, it smelled fresh.

"Boo," Vera said. In a quick snap, her green body glowed with the intensity of a newly cracked glow stick. She slithered her arm around my torso and whispered into my ear, "Good morning little Eddie. Nice eye."

Vera had a thing with touching her minions. Made her feel powerful and shit, like she could do what she pleased with them. Unfortunately it was true. Her fingers touched the purple bruise on my face, the cold forcing me to cringe.

"Got beaten up by the boys at Hell House, didn't you?" she said. "Poor baby. You're lacking strength."

When I ripped my face away from her fingers, she laughed at my outburst. Sure, she pretty much owned me, but our deal didn't include her slimy paws all over my face."Don't touch me, faerie," I said between gritted teeth.

A serpent's smile played at her lips and I wanted to rip her mouth off. "I ought to have you for dinner. However, I've already eaten. My friends are awfully hungry though. Fix them something nice."

"And not another round through Prostitutes Square!" shouted one of the fey, who appeared next to Vera in the same glowing fashion. His voice was gruff, like a cross between a bear and a forest dwarf. I heard Vera call him Thor once, but I always refer to him as the Village Idiot in my mind. "I'm tired of tasting their STDs. And there is no honor is slaying a prostitute."

"I want something young," another one spoke up as he walked out from the darkness. His body was bound by leather armor and he held an ax with an over-sized blade at his side. "Pretty too. But feisty. I like a chase." He was the best hunter of their group.

"How young are we talking here?" I asked.

"Hell House young," said another one. He too appeared at Vera's other side with a red glow on his fiery skin. He smirked.

"No."

"Come now Edward," Vera intervened, her voice gentle but lined with maliciousness. "They'll never be adopted. No one wants a Baroque City rug rat."

"No. No deal. Pick another place."

"Then find your health another place. The illness doesn't go away because someone played the hero for once in his life," replied the fiery one sharply. "You and I are both aware that you can't afford your primitive health care." His words were like quick slices to my chest but the hunter was right. Unfortunately right.

I was suddenly aware of their nearness to me; their epic proportions. Idiot loomed over me in size, resembling a brick wall rather than a fey, his neck hid behind his immense shoulders. Hunter on the other hand was rail thin, though it seemed as though his armor was tailored to make him look bigger. I noticed the disproportions: his arms seemed like vines hanging limply from a concrete wall rather than actual limbs. Vera was the scariest. Rail thin as well, but tall. Extremely tall. Her waist looked no bigger than the length of my shoe. Her face was hollowed out, forcing her eyes to protrude slightly and her nose to seem incredibly thin and chiseled.

"Do or die, human," the bear chipped in. His lips parted, revealing snaggled green teeth that hung grossly over his bottom lip. As if to add insult to injury, a stench came roaring out of his mouth like a frigging stampede of buffalo.

I stood there in their looming presence and felt myself shrink back into my shoes. I couldn't sacrifice my own; I wouldn't sacrifice my own, but I needed my stuff and so did the rest of the kids. If it weren't for the faerie shit, we would've been long dead and gone.

Vera broke the silence. "Let's give him time to think," she said to her goons, placing a hand on each of their shoulders. Her serpent eyes flashed to me, "But when you remember who you need more, bring **two** of your kind. You know where to find us."

* * *

**AN: REVIEW, DAMMIT. -_-**


	3. Chapter II: The Skinny on Hell House

**Chapter II:**  
**The Skinny on Hell House**

**-:-**

Hell House young. _That's fucked up_.

Vera had seeped back into the darkness like the tide of a toxic waste lake. Not like the even needed to wait for a frigging response or anything; they pretty much had me pitifully in their palms.

Heading back to Hell House, I found myself back in the streets smooshed between a rail thin brunette and a giant, both of who continuously murdered my feet as the current moved northward towards the building.

Kids like us suffering in the land of Liberty and Justice for all ain't a new story. In fact, it's as old as time.

Yesterday a fifteen year old died at Hell House from blood loss. The stairs in Hell House gave out on him and he fell pretty bad. Messed up his leg and everything. Blood was fucking everywhere, looking like a fresh coat of paint on the walls. It really didn't help that he was a hemophiliac either.

He needed to get to the emergency room fast, but there was no way to make it out of here and to a hospital in these crowded Baroque streets. We all screamed for help at the crowd, asking for surgeons and shit or anyone who knew how to clean a wound. But we should have known better; we should have known not to waste our breaths on this sorry crowd. No one fucking listens to a Hell House kid. No one wants a Hell House kid, and no one fucking hears them when they scream.

We don't get adopted because we're the worst of the worst. According to the rumors, we torture our new parents and make life complicated as we're pretty much criminals.

I bet you're wondering what the good ol' American government is doing for us. I'll give it to you straight: The government feels nothing about Baroque and all the other piece of shit city-states they keep track of. As long as our filth ain't in their yard, they couldn't give a rat's ass. Be grateful for the peroxide you get at the back of some clinic's van, because that's the most you're gonna get in a long while.

It's why I need the potion. Peroxide can't kill diseases in your blood. It can't kill an unknown virus that's plagued you since birth. For the rest of the kids here, it can't properly treat the psoriasis on your back or the STDs passed down in your veins.

I kept thinking that night: If I had the magic potion shit, maybe I could've helped. Maybe the potion would have done something to ease the pain, buy us time to get the kid to the hospital across the city, fucking do something. Maybe I could have saved the kid's life. All I could do was watch as our older kids consoled him, whispered sweet nothings about how tomorrow they'd put their funds together and buy the kid an ice cream, alls he had to do was hold on. They took of their shirts to stop the blood, but he had already lost too much. He had already lost too fucking much.

You want to know the most fucked up thing though? As the fucking light faded from his eyes, I didn't think about how much I'd miss the little rascal. I only wondered who the fuck would be the next kid to leave us. I wondered how many of us it would take for the Feds to do something. And then I remembered; nobody fucking wanted a Hell House kid.

* * *

**AN: See, there's this thing called reviewing. Most people don't know about it. Only the few are aware. These secret few they have a spot reserved in Fanfiction heaven. But the rest of you… SAVE YOUR SOULS. REVIEW! REVIEW!**


	4. Chapter III: Bella

**Chapter III:  
Bella**

**-:-**

"Where were you?"

"Doesn't matter."

"Like hell it doesn't." Bella Swan was sitting on my bed when I had climbed through the window to my room. The other bodies in the room stirred quietly in their beds, but had not awoken to the sliding of the window pane.

Bella shushed me harshly. "You want the administrators to catch you?"

"Fuck the admins."

She rolled her eyes. Pulling her lanky limbs towards her chest, she rested her chin on her knees. I saw her nose wrinkle, most likely from the stench I carried from being outside with the crowd. I could understand; I smelled like filth.

"I had a nightmare," she said. That only meant one thing. She pissed her bed.

I motioned to my bed with my chin. "Take it. I'm not sleepy."

"Like hell you aren't."

I ignored that comment of course. I took a seat on the window sill and stared at the floorboards. They were scratched up pretty bad, so bad that you couldn't see the color of the wood stain anymore. Just the white of its insides.

"You're still thinking about Dylan, aren't you?" Bella asked, but it wasn't really a question. It was more a statement. "Me too. And the rest of the house. We're all ghosts."

"Fifteen fucking years old and he's lying in a ditch somewhere. Not even a proper funeral or nothing, just a ditch."

"You don't know that," she protested.

"Of course I do. What do you think happens to a Hell House kid when he dies? Funeral? With who mourning him, Bella? His fucking parents? Family? Loved ones?"

"I'd like to think so. Maybe Mrs. Pitch and the rest of the administrators held a small funeral for him."

"That ain't loved ones. Get your head out of the clouds Bells. You're sixteen now. You should know better." I shook my head. "You should know that nobody cares about a Hell House kid."

She became quiet again, as if she were absorbing my words but not as if they were new knowledge; she was taking in the sting of them, probably quietly wondering whether anyone would come to her funeral or something like that. Then she broke the silence. "You're a bug, Edward Cullen. You big fat stupid Stink Bug." she said to me. She climbed up my bed and slipped beneath the white sheet. "Good night, Stink Bug."

The corners of my mouth twitched; I could feel it. Bella had a way with doing that, making me smile when I really wanted to punch a wall. Sometimes it kept me sane. Other times it pissed me off. MOST of the time it pissed me off. "Sixteen years old, and all you can tell me is that I'm a Stink Bug," I replied. She did not respond. The only movement that came immediately after my words was the shutting of her tired eyes.

In the quiet, my mind wandered to Vera and her clan. The Hunter would enjoy someone like Bella. Bella was a fighter. He would enjoy her relatively sharp tongue. Even worse, he would enjoy her will to push him away. The only thing she couldn't fight was her nightmares. They were scary, incredibly scary; she told me about them once or twice, and even I grimaced.

There had to be another way to feed them what they wanted.

* * *

**AN: I bet you won't review. NO OVARIES! NO OVARIES!**


End file.
